Hillary Baggage Too Much For Obama

There is a growing effort by the Clintons — led by Bill — to convey a sense of entitlement for Hillary's newly minted vice presidential ambitions. The theory seems to say that she has earned the designation by her strong showing in primaries throughout the nation, particularly by her recent victories in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana.

Her supporters are demanding a place on the ticket as their right after a bruising primary season.

But ever since Aaron Burr rose from a vice presidential candidacy to contest Thomas Jefferson for the presidency in the House of Representatives, the person who came in second in the balloting for president lost his entitlement to anything.

There are no more rewards for second place. No silver medals in the presidential race.

A less arrogant argument from the Clintonistas is that Hillary's presence on the ticket is vital to its chances for success in November. Noting that a Democrat must carry the very states she has won, the theory is that a VP slot for Hillary would make Obama so much more attractive to these voters that his election would be inevitable. (Disregard that Obama carried some states that would look nice in the Democratic column as well like Illinois, North Carolina, Washington State, Missouri, Connecticut, and Wisconsin.)

But Hillary won these later primaries largely because the poison spewed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright led racially fearful voters to turn on Obama and find peril in his associations. Will Hillary running for vice president make Obama any whiter? Or Wright less offensive?

Let's not mistake racial fear of Obama for personal popularity for Hillary. Most of the blue-collar working class whites who backed Hillary Clinton, particularly the men, can't stand her.

Faced with a choice between race and gender, they decided to hold to their fear of the former and overlook their unease at the latter. One wonders if all these police officers and firefighters and construction workers would actually vote for Hillary against McCain were she the nominee. Wouldn't these Reagan Democrats continue their lifelong exodus from the Democratic Party and back the Republican instead?

In any case, it is a far fetched hope that Hillary's presence on the ticket would so ease their fears that they would back Obama in November.

Hillary Clinton will not help Obama win a single vote.

The feminists who supported her will all vote Democratic with the fear of McCain's likely judicial appointments uppermost in their minds. They are party regulars whose support for Obama would be automatic and axiomatic. Those more recent converts to Hillary, driven by fear of a black candidate with a nutty preacher, are not going to be assuaged by Hillary's presence on the ticket.

Bringing them into the Democratic Party fold is Obama's problems and must be his highest priority. He cannot subcontract the job to Hillary.

And Hillary comes with unique baggage all her own. Her very presence on the ticket makes all of the unanswered questions about Bill Clinton to the fore. They suddenly become relevant and answers become imperative.

1. What did Bill Clinton do for the $15 million he was paid by the emir of Dubai?

2. What did he do for the Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who he brought with him to Kazakhstan and introduced to its president after Giustra gave his foundation, which he controls, $100 million?

3. What did he do for InfoUSA, the direct mail list company that sold lists of vulnerable elderly people to criminally convicted telemarketers so they could scam them?

4. Did Bill Clinton know that Hillary's brothers were being paid to secure some of the pardons he granted on their recommendations?

Obama doesn't need this kind of trouble. Bringing Hillary on the ticket brings Bill with her, these days a loose cannon at best, a self-destructive narcissist at worst. (Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, Newsmax.com)

Hillary Clinton's Colossal Blunder Simply The Last Straw

SICK. Disgusting. And yet revealing. Hillary Clinton is staying in the race in the event some nut kills Barack Obama.

It could happen, but what definitely has happened is that Clinton has killed her own chances of being vice president. She doesn't deserve to be elected dog catcher anywhere now.

Her shocking comment to a South Dakota newspaper might qualify as the dumbest thing ever said in American politics.

Her lame explanation that she brought up the 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy because his brother Ted's illness was on her mind doesn't cut it. Not even close.

We have seen an X-ray of a very dark soul. One consumed by raw ambition to where the possible assassination of an opponent is something to ponder in a strategic way. Otherwise, why is murder on her mind?

It's like Tanya Harding's kneecapping has come to politics. Only the senator from New York has more lethal fantasies than that nutty skater.

We could have seen it coming, if only we had realized Clinton's thinking could be so cold. She has grown increasingly wild in her imagery lately, invoking everything from slavery to the political killings in Zimbabwe in making her argument for the Florida and Michigan delegations. She claimed to be the victim of sexism, despite winning the votes of white men.

But none of it was moving the nomination needle, with Obama, despite recent dents, still on course to be the victor.

So she kept digging deeper, looking for the magic button. Instead, she pushed the eject button, lifting herself right out of consideration.

Giving voice to such a vile thought is all the more horrible because fears Obama would be killed have been an undercurrent to his astonishing rise. Republican Mike Huckabee made a stupid joke about it recently. Many black Americans have talked of it, reflecting their assumption that racists would never tolerate a black President and that Obama would be taken from them.

Clinton has now fed that fear. She needs a very long vacation. And we need one from her.

Say good night, Hillary. And go away. (Michael Goodwin, NY Daily News)

Rude Awakening For The Clintons

This was never supposed to happen.

The winner of the biggest states, the battleground states, the most electorally rich states, the more representative primaries (rather than exclusive caucuses), the contests of Democratic voters only, and likely the popular vote as well is probably headed for the history books instead of the nomination.

Hillary Clinton’s end in the 2008 race, as with so many events in her life, is painful and poignant and drenched in drama. The math is unfair, and Hillary has finally found her best, winning self. But the Clintons are hearing a deafening silence from a party they once ran . Some close aides and friends are asking Hillary to relent, warning her extended campaign is deepening a racial divide in the party that could imperil its chances of winning the presidency. Bill and Hillary Clinton won’t hear of it, insisting there is still a chance. Yet the chance won’t come from their electability argument, only a rival’s implosion or tragedy — Democrats once asked to defend Bill Clinton for lying under oath are not willing to overturn the rules for his wife now.

Life is what happens when we make other plans, and Hillary Clinton’s long-held plan is on its death bed. We will never know how many years Clinton has spent in silent, meditative, disciplined waiting. But as a new senator in 2001, she oozed an almost obsessive intention and deliberation. She took no interviews, stood in the back of the line at Senate press conferences, and insisted on speaking little or last. She was deferential, humble and shrewd. She played it smart with Democrats and Republicans alike, reaching out to former impeachment foes and Republican critics in bipartisan legislative compromise and, privately, in prayer groups.

But calculation, calibration or even religious patience still cannot stop fate. Having raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, Clinton has driven her campaign more than $30 million in debt and had to loan it millions in personal money. In the process, Clinton has let an unprecedented juggernaut dissolve while her opponent, who had only a pipe dream, triumphed in a battle between hubris and hope.

Barack Obama proved that winning is indeed a science, of breaking down voters and opportunities for victory — district by district, county by county, town by town and block by block. He mastered the rules of the Democrats’ very strange game. Team Obama owned the map, finding delegates where they could and stopping at nothing to get them. He not only won more delegates than Clinton in states she won, like New Hampshire, Nevada and Texas, but netted the same amount of delegates from the Idaho caucuses that Clinton picked up in her 10-point win in Pennsylvania. The vote totals are staggering — approximately 20,000 in Idaho compared to more than 2 million in Pennsylvania.

Team Clinton could have competed aggressively against Obama at the very same game; they had the money and influence and party activists to do so. They sure had a leg up on time. With the help of her husband; the alleged greatest mind in the party, Mark Penn; Harold Ickes; Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell; and Terry McAuliffe ( two men who had operated the party machine), how could Hillary have ceded this advantage?

Hillary, should she be making more plans, should follow the footsteps of Al Gore, the only person since Adlai Stevenson to be welcomed back by the Democratic Party after losing. When the Supreme Court ended Gore’s White House dream, he delivered his best speech, conceding that “no matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shape the soul and let the glory out.”

When it’s all over the Clintons can talk of glory, and of party unity, but they can’t say this was never supposed to happen. (A.B. Stoddard, The Hill)
Interesting read: Backing from Japanese town named Obama!

Obama's Delegate Count Grows

It's all about the math.

Despite Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 41-point margin of victory in West Virginia this week, the delegate endorsements -- plus support from a large labor union -- kept rolling in for Sen. Barack Obama yesterday, moving him ever closer to the number that really matters: 2,026.

By day's end, the senator from Illinois had picked up eight new delegates, giving him a total of 1,895, compared with 1,718 for Mrs. Clinton. That means Mr. Obama is 131 delegates short of securing the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr. Obama's attempts to woo blue-collar voters also got a boost when the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers union, which previously had endorsed former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, announced it was "enthusiastically" supporting Mr. Obama.

In a statement, the union said Mr. Obama was "clearly the candidate who can best lead our nation out of the dark period of economic decline created by the Bush administration's allegiance to Wall Street profiteering at the expense of worker prosperity."

Four delegates pledged to Mr. Edwards, who endorsed Mr. Obama on Wednesday, also threw their support to Mr. Obama, as did four superdelegates: Reps. Henry Waxman and Howard Berman of California; Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington; and Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen. Mr. Cohen is a superdelegate whose endorsement is personal and doesn't represent a change in position by the union, which remains uncommitted, a spokesman said.

All in all, yesterday's announcements seemed destined to dent Mrs. Clinton's argument that her West Virginia win keeps her candidacy alive as she heads into the final five primaries -- at least in the eyes of the remaining 230 undecided superdelegates -- party leaders and elected officials who may ultimately decide who is the nominee.

In theory, the superdelegates are free to vote as they please at the convention in late August, but in this unusual campaign, many have already cast their lot with one or the other candidate.

"The numbers don't lie," said Anthony J. Corrado, a political scientist at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, who noted that after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries 10 days ago, 40 superdelegates -- including three former party chairmen -- broke for Mr. Obama, compared with 11 for Mrs. Clinton.

"A number of superdelegates have, based on the math of the delegation selection process, concluded that Barack Obama is going to be the nominee and are starting to make an effort to bring the nominating process to closure," he said.

"There's no way she wins the nomination," added Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, noting he expects a steady rather than overwhelming rush of superdelegates moving to the Obama column in the near future.

"He [Obama] may have understandings with a lot of superdelegates about coming out for him after every contest -- about 10 or 15 at a time -- to play on the notion of the inevitability of his nomination. He's going to get them ultimately, but they are going to let her play out the next two weeks."

Actually, next Tuesday's primaries may allow Mr. Obama to finally claim a majority of pledged delegates, making it easier for him to clinch the nomination without relying too heavily on undecided superdelegates, many of whom have expressed reluctance to act as final arbiters in the nominating process.

Mrs. Clinton is expected to win the Kentucky primary, which has 51 delegates at stake, and Mr. Obama is expected to win in Oregon, with 52, but Mr. Obama needs only 25 total from the two states to give him a majority of the 3,253 pledged delegates. He's expected to do that easily.

Then there's the John Edwards factor. With four of the 19 delegates pledged to him from the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries now in Mr. Obama's column, attention has switched to the remaining 15.

If they come on board for Mr. Obama, some political analysts believe, that will undercut Mrs. Clinton's argument for including delegates from Florida and Michigan, who were disqualified by the Democratic National Committee after holding their primaries earlier than party rules allowed.

Even if those delegates -- 185 in Florida and 128 in Michigan -- are distributed between the candidates based on the party's rules of proportional allocation, the extra Edwards delegates would still give Mr. Obama a majority of pledged delegates overall, NBC's political director, Chuck Todd, argued on MSNBC's "First Read" Web site yesterday.

In Pennsylvania, only four superdelegates remain undecided, all of them congressmen: Jason Altmire, D-McCandless, Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, Tim Holden, D-Schuylkill, and Robert Brady, D-Philadelphia.

It would "take a miracle" for Mrs. Clinton to secure the nomination now, said Mr. Altmire.

"But I'm going to give her the next two weeks to play out the process," he said, adding he wouldn't formally endorse a candidate until after the final primaries June 3. "I'm waiting out of deference to my district, which voted for her, but after June 3 it will be a very quick decision. A lot of other superdelegates are in the same position I am."

Still, he had harsh words for the Clinton campaign's claim Wednesday that her West Virginia victory shows she is the best candidate to take on Republican John McCain in the fall.

"How do you make the case that you're the strongest candidate in the fall," Mr. Altmire asked, "when you didn't even win your own primary? How do you say you'll run a better campaign in November when the person you lost to ran a better campaign than you did? In the end, it's a political campaign, and he ran a better one, which is why he won."

Clinton campaign officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Next Tuesday's Oregon and Kentucky primaries are followed by Puerto Rico's on June 1, and Montana's and South Dakota's on June 3, with a total of 189 delegates in play. (By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Thank You, Hillary

By Jeff Dickson; Daily - University of Washington, WA

Dear Hillary,

As a conservative student and proud supporter of the honorable Sen. John McCain, I want to thank you for your continued actions that do nothing but hinder your party’s chances in November.

Your short-lived run at success almost proved worthwhile — almost. As if Sen. Barack Obama hadn’t all but secured the nomination weeks ago, the recent primaries in North Carolina and Indiana allowed even your strongest supporters to let go of their last shred of hope.

But not you. You continue to press on with a relentless persistence that makes Al Gore’s Florida recount attempts seem half-hearted by comparison. Even when the rest of your fellow Democrats beg and plead for your withdrawal from the race, you ignore the opportunity to bow out with dignity.

From our point of view, your continued involvement is welcomed with open arms. Please, continue to throw mud in Obama’s face and point out his personal flaws and professional inadequacies. You’re simply saving conservatives the time and effort. Instead, we can save the valuable funds until later in the race, when we will win over your voters by touting McCain’s experience and revealing Obama’s naïvety.

As long as you continue to raise questions about Obama’s character (by referencing Rev. Jeremiah Wright, for example), you help our efforts in several ways. It keeps such issues in the headlines and voters’ minds without our campaign having to stoop to such levels, which, in turn, makes our campaign cleaner and more appealing. Then, Obama attacks you and the rest of the Clinton campaign instead of the McCain Train. Basically, you still come across as the bad person and we reap all the benefits.

Obviously, the chance for you to save face passed long ago, and by now your chance to join on as Obama’s vice presidential nominee is slowly disappearing. At one point, your name along with his on the ticket would have been a powerhouse combination that would have posed quite a threat to the elephants. But now that you’ve all but blown your chance at becoming the first female vice president in history, it is Bill Richardson that we need to be weary of.

The only exciting aspect of your campaign that remains is to see exactly how you are forced out of the race to make you quit, or will you deliver a remorseful concession speech via satellite from a shack in Arkansas that will mark the beginning of a two-year long hiatus from the real world? Personally, my money is on a chorus of Howard Dean-like “Will it really take nothing short of a cerebral aneurismbeyahs” highlighting a very public meltdown, potentially while arguing with Dean himself.

In short, your vain efforts have given the Republican Party a very real chance in an election that, from the start, seemed to be a virtual shoe-in for the Democrats. You continue to shoot down your party’s efforts while simultaneously aiding our own, and for that, all red-blooded Republicans offer you their sincerest thanks.

Keep up the good work.

Sincerely,

The Republican Party

***** Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

Hillary Clinton Should Step Aside

“A lady always knows when to leave the party.” Or so my mother used to say. It’s time for Hillary Clinton to take a tip and leave — not the party, of course, but the presidential race.

Clinton’s chance to make a graceful exit may have already passed. It will take some savvy charm school etiquette to save her reputation, given the path she’s tramping down now. And charm has not been Clinton’s strong suit.

She should save her political future and concede the nomination to Obama. The Democratic Party’s chances to win the White House are at stake now, not just her own career. Or her husband’s ambitions, if it is he who is pushing her to continue in a race she cannot win.

Whatever the impetus, Hillary is doubling down. She reportedly has recharged her campaign’s coffers from her own substantial bankroll, adding more than $6 million of her own money in the past month.

Yet the only hope that remains for Clinton is some sort of huge gaffe on the part of Barack Obama — which is unlikely, as he gains more Teflon the longer he stays in the race.

Another faint possibility is that Clinton’s team may dredge up some slice of political mud with which Obama could be slimed in these final, crucial months. But if the Rev. Jeremiah Wright did not suffice to take him down, what would? Which raises the question: Is Hillary Clinton’s hubris so great that she is willing to harm the Democratic Party’s chances in November just to keep herself in the race? Apparently so.

Months ago, the choice presented to Democratic voters was a toss-up between two laudable goals: whether to elect the nation’s first black presidential nominee or the first female one. Campaigning had not yet turned negative, and it was possible to feel that, no matter who won, the party was on its way to victory and making history.

Unfortunately for the party, after an ugly few months of mudslinging it has not reached a consensus — yet it must still make a choice. That choice will almost certainly be Obama, and that likelihood has stirred considerable rancor among Clinton’s supporters.

But here is an undeniable truth: Obama will never become the nation’s first black president without the help of the woman he defeats for the nomination. Crazy hardball politics will no doubt return as the campaign becomes Barack Obama vs. John McCain. The substantial influence of the Clintons could help undercut that effect.

Yet, days after her split decision in Indiana and drubbing in North Carolina, Clinton is taking a selfish, calculated risk in hoping she can influence her own last-gasp chances at the nomination by focusing on how the delegates of Florida and Michigan are seated at the convention.

If Clinton manages to convince the Democratic National Committee to tweak its rules to benefit her campaign, she risks undercutting the very powerful bloc of younger, especially female and minority, voters that the Obama and Clinton campaigns have so successfully energized.

Does Clinton really want that to be her legacy? To lose the nomination and also hurt the Democratic party for years? If she outrages those new voters by crushing their belief that their participation matters, she could wound many a future Democratic campaign by diminishing what could become a powerful party base.

The interesting thing about Clinton’s losing position is that now she gets to put that “it takes a village” refrain into action. By doing the right thing, she can help her party affect the lives of citizens for the better. By acting to hurt the presumptive Democratic nominee further, she only helps the Republicans.

The come-from-behind struggle against great odds is a beloved story line in American culture. Blind, destructive vanity that won’t face reality, not so much.

This is Barack Obama’s moment. And yet, Hillary Clinton has a crucial role to play. It is to step aside, gracefully. (By Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star Editorial Board)
Image - Source

Hillary Clinton Is One Sorry Sight On Her Way To Defeat

She once described herself as "the most famous person you know very little about." But as she careens across the country in a desperate attempt to rescue her campaign, America is coming to know Hillary Clinton all too well.

The tenacity that even critics praised suddenly looks tawdry. The persistence against impossible odds appears anything but noble. Long after the party is over, Clinton's refusal to go home is taking on the trappings of a sad spectacle.

Her inability to accept defeat is not, it seems clear, about public service or even politics. It is merely personal.

With Barack Obama on a glide path to the Democratic nomination - he has insurmountable leads in delegates and popular votes - Clinton's cringe-inducing performance is doing what her harshest critics never could. It has ripped away any pretense that she actually stands for something.

The conventional portrait of her as an unflinching, devoted partisan has been proven wrong. Partisanship, it turns out, was just another fig leaf hiding a singular allegiance.

Politics has been a male narcissists' playpen, but Hillary is showing she doesn't take a backseat to any of the boys, including her hubby. Consider a few of her recent zig-zags in an incoherent bid to outflank Obama.

A year ago, she affected a bad Southern drawl as she quoted a black hymn in an Alabama church. Now she emphasizes her blue-collar roots as she summons cameras to record her downing a shot with factory workers in Pennsylvania.

In the blink of a campaign eye, she went from Rosa Parks to Rosie the Riveter. Did she care if we noticed, or did she assume we wouldn't?

She once likened the House of Representatives to a "plantation" in front of black audience, but now touts her base of white support. She once stood mute as Rep. Charles Rangel called President Bush "our Bull Connor," a reference to the infamous 1960s police commissioner who turned water hoses on civil rights marchers, but now she employs a bare racial calculus.

In a newspaper interview, she cited how "Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

She's right on the facts, but saying it that way after a career of flaying Republicans for courting whites should at least make her blush. But it's all of a recent piece.

Her anti-Iraq vow, "If George Bush doesn't end this war, I will," is replaced by a threat to "obliterate" Iran. She taps her personal piggy bank for more than $11 million so she can portray herself as defender of the middle class.

The wince-a-minute circus seems like a saboteur's effort to prove she will do anything to win, including trying to change the rules.

All along, everybody used 2,025 as the number of delegates denoting a nominating majority, but her spokesman last week called 2,025 "a phony number." The claim is part of Clinton's argument that delegates from Michigan and Florida must be included.

That's now, but when the Democratic National Committee was eliminating those states' delegates for holding their primaries in January, Clinton was on board.

She has revealed Obama's weaknesses among working-class whites, and she has been right about his lack of experience, but she has been rejected by voters as an alternative. Against that fact, she sounds almost delusional in arguing to superdelegates she would be a better general election candidate. On the basis of what?

Indeed, after her narrow victory in Indiana and his landslide win in North Carolina, she is now further behind in delegates and no closer in the popular votes than she was before the Pennsylvania primary.

So even while Obama was going through the roughest patch of the campaign, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his own slight of small-town Americans threatening to undermine him, Clinton couldn't persuade voters she should be the nominee.

Which explains why she is calling the rules unfair. The only thing she hasn't done is blame them on "the vast right-wing conspiracy."

Actually, she came close to doing the opposite. In a TV interview, she faulted her party's way of apportioning delegates, and said, "If we had the Republican rules, I would already be the nominee."

So don't count her out just yet. Perhaps she's thinking of running against "the vast left-wing conspiracy" of her own party. (Michael Goodwin, NY Daily News)

***** Ouch!

The Clintons - Seeds Of Destruction

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.

(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”)

But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.

I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.

The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.

Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.

Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.

Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.

Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.

Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”

It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.

So class is not a Clinton forte.

But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.

The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame. (Bob Herbert, New York Times)

Hillary Is Nasty But She Is Not Tough

Hillary Clinton's current ads seek to portray her as the tough leader who is ready on Day One to handle crises. Borrowing from a line made famous by Harry Truman, the tag line trumpets, "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen." The sub-text, of course, is that she will dish out a full plate of heat and if Obama can't respond on her gutter level, he can't handle heat.ﾠ

The truth is almost exactly the opposite. Hillary is nasty, but she is not tough. In fact, Hillary is a classic whiner. She and Bill whine about everything that doesn't go well for them. Unlike Harry Truman, who also said, "the buck stops here," she and Bill accept responsibility for nothing and blame others, especially the media, when things go wrong or their deceptions are exposed.ﾠ

Hillary and Bill whine about Democratic Party activists, young voters, running as a female, the media in general, the media catching her fabricating her history (bringing peace to Ireland, opposing NAFTA, facing sniper fire in Bosnia, etc.), the appeal of hope, Obama's eloquence, money, donors, Democratic Party rules. Last week, Hillary blamed the "activist base" of the Democratic Party -- and MoveOn, in particular -- for many of her electoral defeats, claiming, without a shred of evidence, that activists had "flooded" state caucuses and "intimidated" her supporters. Rather than accept responsibility for her campaign's well-documented failure adequately to plan for the caucus states, and despite her repeated claim she is the candidate "ready on Day One," she attacked core Democratic Party supporters. Rather than take responsibility for her inability to inspire the activist base with her ideas, she whined about their support of a more thoughtful, inspirational candidate. Candidates normally celebrate high levels of voter activism in the primaries, knowing these activists will work for the party's nominee in the general election, but Hillary is willing to burn the peasants in order to win the village for herself.
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Hillary and Bill whine about young voters. Last week, Bill said in Pennsylvania that young voters are easily fooled and older voters are wiser -- too wise to be fooled by Obama's inspiring rhetoric. Of course, he forgot to mention that the most well-educated voters -- young and old -- heavily favor Obama over Hillary. Most candidates, and both political parties, yearn for support from young voters because young voters represent not just the present, but also the future. And, certainly if young voters were supporting Hillary, she wouldn't be whining about them. But since she is not very good at inspiring young voters, she chooses to whine about them. Thankfully, she has not yet proposed raising the voting age to 60, but that could be next.
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Hillary whines about being a female candidate, as though it's harder to be female in America than black. Said Hillary, "It's hard. It's hard being a woman out there." [Add some tears and the picture is complete] Her surrogate, Geraldine Ferraro, even made the wholly implausible claim that the only reason Obama was succeeding was his race -- a claim Hillary never repudiated. Of course, at the same time the Clintons whine about misogyny, they argue to super-delegates that Obama is not electable because he is black and that, as a woman, she is the electable candidate. Neither Bill nor Hill can explain why all the white male Democratic Presidential candidates are out of the race. Could it be that Obama has demonstrated qualities to voters that the others lacked? Could it be that Obama has come from more than 20 points behind in just a few months because he offers qualities, such as hope and honesty, which voters, by large pluralities, think Hillary lacks?
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Hillary frequently whines about the media not being "fair." This is an old Clinton complaint, going back to her stone-walling about Travelgate, Whitewater and the revelations of Bill's many sexual shenanigans. How unfair of the press to remember that she supported NAFTA, falsely claimed to have been a key negotiator in peace talks in Ireland, and lied about her Bosnia trip.
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Caught dead-on lying about being under "sniper fire" as she landed in Bosnia -- when absolutely no danger existed -- she claimed she simply had "misspoke" [seven times?], then claimed she was tired by "lack of sleep," then Bill chimed in to attack the media for even covering the story. This was all taking place as she asserted her competence to answer that mythical 3 am phone call. So if we believe the Clintons, her "lack of sleep" caused her to fabricate a story about landing in Bosnia into hostile sniper fire and risking her life like a seasoned military veteran, but this fabrication should be disregarded because, despite her history of sleep deprivation, if a crisis occurs at 3 am, we can trust her to be awake and alert and respond truthfully and with good judgment. With leadership like this, we'll all be awake at night.
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Hillary whines about Obama's inspiration and eloquence. Hillary whines about the very nature of hope. Despite the Clintons' history of playing the Hope Card (we all remember Bill's 1992 campaign biopic, "The Man from Hope"), when the other guy is offering it, all of a sudden, hope is suspicious. In fact, it is downright delusional. "I could stand up here and say, let's get everyone together, let's get unified and the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and the world will be perfect," she said in mock sarcasm of Obama's message of conciliation and hope.
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Hillary whines about the fact Obama has engaged more donors and raised more money than she. Of course, she didn't think it was unfair in 2007 when she had twice as much money as any other candidate. But as soon as she fell behind, Little Miss $100+ million War Chest was whining about being outspent. But isn't the ability to inspire donors and raise money part of being a successful presidential candidate? Isn't that a measure of electability, not something to be disdained?
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Hillary now is whining about Florida and Michigan, piously claiming that failing to seat delegates from those states would be fundamentally undemocratic. But when the Democratic National Committee's rules panel declared Florida's accelerated primary date was not permitted under party rules, all of Hillary's 12 representatives on the 30 member rules panel voted for Florida's full disenfranchisement, which, under party rules, applied to Michigan, as well. In October 2007, when she was far and away the Democratic front-runner, Hillary told a New Hampshire public radio audience, "It's clear this election [Michigan] is not going to count for anything." Oh, the sting of hypocrisy, but rather than accept responsibility for the obvious -- that she supported the very rule she now attacks -- she plays the "poor me" card and digs the Democratic Party into a deeper hole.
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Do we want a whiner to be President? Commander-in-Chief? Do we want to live through more chapters in the never-ending, but never-changing, Clinton Drama of Blame, Attack and Half-Truths? Or do we prefer a president who has demonstrated candor, who is willing to treat voters like adults, who takes responsibility for his behavior and offers thoughtful commentary on serious issues -- as Obama did with his former pastor? Do we want a president who behaves like a mature adult or someone whose emotional intelligence is on the level of a spoiled, whiny teenager? (The Huffington Post)

Why Won't Hillary Drop Out?

She's going to lose, and by at least as much as she's losing now. What's in it for her?

(By Andrew Tobolowsky)
Here is what I really do not understand: why is Hillary Clinton still running?

Because I currently live 6 time-zone hours from the United States, news doesn't happen while I'm awake. So a couple of mornings I woke up at 5:45 am, because I had something to do, to see that the Mavericks lost by a lot and Hillary won by a little. It was not a good morning.

Not because it matters…well the Mavericks matter…but because it was just barely enough of a victory to keep the deluded Clinton campaign going.

Despite the "massive victory," of something like eleven delegates in the biggest state left, and the one in which she had by far the biggest lead, whittling Obama's lead all the way down to around 140, it is not even an uphill battle. It is an impossibility. She can't come closer than about 130 in pledged delegates and the number of super delegates she needs is edging closer to 80% of the remaining.

SHE must know. And she's in debt, and every minute that she remains in the race helps John McCain. It's a classic "if I can't have it, no one can have it," situation, yet we all know this is a woman who has dealt with adversity before with some dignity, even if we don't personally like her. What's in her head? What's making her do it?

To people like me, she habitually claims that it is borderline immoral not to wait to hear the rest of America speak, that she owes it to them somehow. It may be true that, in a best of seven playoff series for example, once you've lost four games be it in game 4, 5, or 6, you owed your fans better. But that doesn't mean you get to try to give it to them.

So WHAT is she doing?

I don't wish to be petty, though to that depth I will sometimes descend, but in that regard, the most revealing quote from her was this: "I believe I have to win. I feel like that's my task."

In all fairness, that's something that could be taken at least one, possibly two other ways, but it's hard with how far she has demonstrated she will go, how little attention she has paid to her real situation, to avoid the suggestion that this is a kind of quest for her."My task" has disturbing messianic undertones. Her task in what, life? She was MEANT to be president? The voters disagree. At this point it is clear, and will remain clear, no matter what happens, no matter who wishes it could be different, that the voters disagree.

Or perhaps, it's only as me auld father said it was. After having suffered through eight years with Bill, refusing to divorce the philandering wreck, she feels like this is her reward. But you don't get the presidency just by deserving it, especially not on a personal level.

I know her arguments, so do you. Electability, she says. I personally can't stand the idea of it, that someone could win an election and yet not be the choice, that the future of her campaign is predicated on allowing a government body to say that it knows better than the American people which is a terrible precedent even when it serves your purpose…which is something which you really shouldn't be okay with it, which will come back and bite you in the ass…Electability is a concern for the voting populace to decide like any other, and I reject the whole notion that anyone else has a right to it, as should YOU Hillary fans, who should be first fans of keeping the shreds of democratic power which remains in your hands intact…

But the more important thing is that it isn't an issue. I recognize, for example, that Ohio is an important race, but even Hillary's ability to beat Obama in Ohio doesn't REALLY say anything about her ability to beat McCain there, or the ability of the democrats to win there…but I can concede Ohio, despite, as noted above, the philosophical repulsion I have for the notion of stealing elections for strategic reasons (where do you let them stop strategizing for you?). But can anyone on Earth say, with a straight face "I'm sorry, I want the superdelegates to go for Hillary because Obama can't beat her in big states like California, New York, and Texas. Because even though no matter what happens California and New York will go massively blue and Texas massively red, uh…Uhhhhh…."

Also it would seem pretty obvious that one has to guess that the person is more electable who can win more votes and that's Obama. And it would seem like the person who can bring more disillusioned, disenfranchised voters, voters who previously have not voted, to the polls, would be more electable, and that's Obama. Even in Pennsylvania, and even according to CNN, Obama won voters who were unregistered as late as January, or had switched parties by then, by a massive 59%-39% margin. Who's a uniter and not a divider? Incidentally, Pennyslvania hasn't gone blue since 1988.

Look, Hil fans. Hillary is a distinguished public servant, a good speaker, and an intelligent person. I don't blame you for LIKING her, for thinking she's the best candidate, for WISHING she would win. I know if Obama were losing, I'd be upset, I would stick around his campaign for as long as possible. And I know there are a lot of ways in which Obama rubs Hillary fans wrong; in many ways he is her antithesis. Hers is the rhetoric of a democratic status quo (I do NOT say status quo, Hillary will not keep George Bush's legacy alive), his of a kind of Kennedyian possibility which so many candidates try to channel, which so often fails to materialize.

They're not THAT different. They're both career politicians to an extent to which is not normally recognized, neither has often done very much else in their lives. Hillary was a lawyer, and a law professor, then first lady of Arkansas, then the United states, then America. She's had eight years in the senate. Obama's been in the Illinois state senate since 1995, and a US senator for 4. They both, really, have experience. And I understand, again, why Hillary voters wish that Hillary could win.

But there is a border beyond which this is short-sighted, and an inability to show sense here becomes less and less commendable. You can want her to win, but she's not going to, and it's time to decide what to do about it.

Consider that here, in her last, best hope she picked up less than 8% of the delegates she needed to win, a gain that will be absolutely annihilated in North Carolina, and consider what a truly divided nation, indeed a truly divided democratic nation, will do if the winner is not the won who had their voice, but the one decided in a smoky room in Washington…consider that even that scenario is so unlikely it borders on impossible, realize all you can do is close the gap enough, and stoke inter-party hatred enough to make it real easy for the nation to make a choice in the inevitable Obama-McCain race. Consider, that's all.

When the country's future is in your hands it is not enough to do simply what you want to do. It's too important to be that heedless. I blame no one, again, for liking Hillary, for wanting Hillary to win, for being committed to Hillary. But you are, right now, a participant in our nature's future, and I urge you to act in a way compatible with the reason which makes nations great. Hillary knows it, and so do you. If you can't stand Obama, vote for McCain, that's what democratic choice is about. But move above the knee-jerk reactionism, assess the situation, and realize the facts. As an electorate we can be better than we are, we can make more informed decisions, we can become participants in a process which produces reasonable results by forcing it to conform to the expectations of a reasonable people.

Reason says Hillary is going to lose. Listen to your head, not your heart, and don't split the country into a third part for the sake of someone else's refusal to bow to what she knows perfectly well. Don't participate in that refusal. We're all better than that. And this country's more than divided enough as it is with that big ol' gap running down the red-blue center, without our collective stubbornness forcing the crack wide.

Again, to forestall probably 90% of the people who were going to post responses to this column, this is not about voting for Obama. Doing the right thing is not voting for MY candidate. This is about voting for THE candidates, Obama or McCain. Only an excess of stubbornness on the part of Hillary Clinton and on the part of a (not by too much, admittedly) minority electorate is keeping this gap open. Even if McCain wins, I hope I comport myself with the respect due fellow Americans who, by now, have much of the rest of the world against them anyway…and begin to heal the wounds of the last eight years. But Hillary can't win, and this is a divide we actually CAN dispense with.

The American electorate will be treated with respect, by politicians, when it demands respect by being respectable. When it refuses to be manipulated, or scared, when it uses discretion and sense, and when it demands accountability. America will get the politicans she deserves when she steadfastly refuses anything else, when it will no longer let wool like Hillary Clinton be drawn over its eyes. America will get the politician she deserves when she proves she deserves them. If we can get there, we can start to heal a dangerously divided country. And that's, I think, all there is to it. (411mania.com)